RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - SEPTEMBER 13: Singer Beyonce performs on stage during a concert in the Rock in Rio Festival on September 13, 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Photo by Buda Mendes/Getty Images) Staff

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NASHVILLE, TN - NOVEMBER 05: Brandy Clark performs during the 2013 CMA Songwriters Series at the CMA Theater on November 5, 2013 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images) Stringer

Bob Dylan in 1970, the year he released his 10th studio album, Self Portrait. A new collection, Another Self Portrait (1969-1971), comes out August 27.

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AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS - NOVEMBER 10: Eminem accepts the Best Hip Hop award onstage during the MTV EMA's 2013 at the Ziggo Dome on November 10, 2013 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. (Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images for MTV) Staff

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INDIO, CA - APRIL 13: Rapper Pusha T performs onstage during day 2 of the 2013 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Club on April 13, 2013 in Indio, California. (Photo by Karl Walter/Getty Images for Coachella) Staff

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NEWPORT, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 15: Laura Mvula performs on day 3 of the Isle of Wight Festival at Seaclose Park on June 15, 2013 in Newport, Isle of Wight. (Photo by Rob Harrison/Getty Images) Stringer

Lou Reed joins Gorillaz on stage for a song during Wednesday's Gibson Amphitheatre show in Universal City. ///ADDITIONAL INFO: 11.gorillaz.1028.ab - shot 10/27/10 - ARMANDO BROWN, FOR THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER - The Gorillaz and N.E.R.D. perform at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, on Wednesday. ARMANDO BROWN, FOR THE ORANGE CO

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JERSEY CITY, NJ - AUGUST 01: Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine performs on stage during the 2009 All Points West Music & Arts Festival at Liberty State Park on August 1, 2009 in Jersey City, New Jersey. (Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Kevin Shields Staff

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LAS VEGAS, NV - SEPTEMBER 21: Sir Paul McCartney performs onstage during the iHeart Radio Music Festival Village on September 21, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for Clear Channel) Staff

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NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 08: Singer Miley Cyrus attends her "Bangerz" Record Release Signing at Planet Hollywood Times Square on October 8, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Lawrie/Getty Images) Staff

LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 07: Musician Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age performs onstage during The 24th Annual KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas at The Shrine Auditorium on December 7, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for CBS Radio) Staff

Funny thing happened when I went to compile my favorite albums of the year – they hadn't really changed much since July, when I sorted out my picks for the best up to that point.

Vampire Weekend and Kanye West and Daft Punk were still vying for the top spot, with nothing in the past six months remotely close to unseating them. A few standouts I wrongly relegated to honorable mentions had risen in my estimation, and a handful of others (Neko Case!) made their merits known only recently. But that didn't mean Eminem or Queens of the Stone Age were going to overthrow, say, My Bloody Valentine's intoxicating first album in 22 years, the downloading of which crashed servers in February.

So rather than lapse into too much regurgitation, I've taken a different approach to summing up. This is not my list of the 20 best albums, though you can find my personal picks at the bottom. Instead, this is the stuff you should have paid attention to in 2013.

Much of it was inescapable. Some of it you'll need to Spotify. All of it was essential listening for anyone who cared to debate the merits of an often profound year in music.

1. Daft Punk and Disclosure – Two duos from across the Atlantic who pushed electronic music forward by dragging it back to the past. Random Access Memories, the first new assortment from France's enigmatic robots in eight years, meticulously evoked late-'70s disco sumptuousness, roped in unlikely guest stars, downplayed digitalism in favor of meaty instrumentation – and wound up a tour de force with the catchiest single of the year at its center. Disclosure's Settle was almost as startling. The Lawrence brothers, Guy and Howard, revived the crisp programming and soulful hooks of turn-of-the-millennium U.K. garage grooves but pulled that sound in new directions, escaping the numbing drone of so much EDM. Dance music with brains.

2. Vampire Weekend – It's all about the songs – that's why Modern Vampires of the City, the third arresting development in the rapid evolution of the best NYC band in action, is the finest platter of popular music released in the past 12 months. Strip away the alternately shimmering and shot-through sonics, set aside the worldly flourishes and classical accoutrements and sporadic rock 'n' roll dappling, and what's left is a vivid retracing of blueprints Paul Simon first etched 40 years ago: existential yet spiritual philosophy conveyed in beguiling melodies that reverberate in your mind for weeks. In addition to everything else, it's also the most quotable album of the year – even more than Yeezus.

3. Anything Pharrell Williams did – The year's most peripheral star deserves every one of the seven Grammy nominations he snagged at the start of the month. Apart from behind-the-boards work for Jay Z, Jennifer Hudson and more, his creamy falsetto, rivaled only by Justin Timberlake's wail, has been embedded in several of the year's most popular items, from unavoidable radio dominators like Daft Punk's “Get Lucky” and Robin Thicke's “Blurred Lines” to wistful nuggets he keeps supplying to the Despicable Me franchise. “Just a Cloud Away” and “Happy” are sweet slices that deserve Oscar consideration – but likely won't get any.

4. Paul McCartney, Then and New– There was more Macca product in 2013 than in 1993 or 1973, and only half of it recycled the past or cashed in on brewing Beatlemania-at-50 nostalgia. Help! and Rockshow arrived on Blu-ray looking and sounding better than ever; the latter title accompanied a superb remastering of the bicentennial behemoth Wings Over America (still best on vinyl). Way back in January, he turned up in Dave Grohl's excellent Sound City documentary – and his ad-hoc jam with the surviving members of Nirvana, “Cut Me Some Slack,” earned the 16-time Grammy winner a best rock song nod. Last month brought a second treasure trove of BBC performances from the Fab Four. And the month before that delivered the most vital of all these releases: New, his first batch of fresh ones in a half-dozen years, and another richly tuneful late-career gem to slot alongside his other post-2000 winners. At 71, he's still rewriting the rock star rulebook.

5. Marshall Mathers – You can keep Eminem's comeback albums of the past few years. In retrospect, his weak Relapse and sharper Recovery were merely warm-ups for this intense refocusing of vision, necessary self-encouragement that strengthened his resolve enough to let the real Slim Shady return. The tremendous result, The Marshall Mathers LP 2, is a thorny, riveting knockout, as bleak as his boarded-up boyhood home on the cover yet as wickedly raw (and viciously funny) as anything the 8 Mile survivor has ever recorded. His flow is once again mind-boggling, his rhymes ruthless and radical, his sound (with props due Rick Rubin) compellingly straightforward instead of overblown and fussy – and his samples are so obvious it's gutsy to have used them. Anyone who insisted money and fame would cripple him was dead wrong. He has soberly reached his 40s more inventive than ever.

6. Kanye West – Despite all the inane but possibly true things that tripped out of his mouth in interviews, there remains Yeezus, a towering achievement that will likely sound just as freshly terrifying in 2063 as it does now. Vulgar but so often beautiful, obliterating in its minimalism and harrowingly unhinged lyrically, it teems with relevant commentary about the lure of materialism, the disappearance of the middle class, the ego vs. the superego, leaders vs. followers – and most of all leaves listeners wondering about the psychological stability of its author. He has stepped up from decrying racism to fighting classism from atop a mound of wealth, regardless how few copies his manifesto sells (titles from J. Cole and Jay Z both beat it). “Powered by poison and poisoned by power,” as Pitchfork put it, he conjured an overwhelming 41-minute experience that his over-indulgent three-hour stage production couldn't match – and still that bipolar mess fascinated. Love him or hate him, it's hard to disagree with the late Lou Reed's assessment: “No one's near doing what he's doing, it's not even on the same planet.”

7. Five Justin Timberlake songs that aren't “Suit & Tie” or “Mirrors” – Hopefully, you've heard at least (the first) half of The 20/20 Experience. Mistrustful ears who have been trying to avoid his charms have nonetheless encountered singles as omnipresent as Miley's – so perhaps “Take Back the Night” ought to be tossed aside as well. But there's so much more worth hearing, from his acoustic blues “Drink You Away” and the wicked Prince update “Spaceship Coupe” to the mightiest track he's cut so far, the eight-minute “Pusher Love Girl,” the one that ought to win the Grammy for best R&B song.

8. Five Miley Cyrus songs that aren't “Wrecking Ball” or “We Can't Stop” – If you're going to add any tongue-wagging to the debate over the year's most controversial coming-of-age, an inflated non-story that got updated every time she bent over or changed her hairstyle, you must at least have heard what you're complaining about. Blot out the twerking, her nearly nude videos and other calculated attempts to make headlines and you might find yourself drawn to an undeniably strong voice attached to a very savvy brain. Her leap into adulthood is certainly better than Rihanna's last two forays.

9. Three female artists under 25 – Soccer moms stuck in the '80s and Lilith Fair purists – and anyone else who thinks all the next generation can muster is “Roar” and “Royals” – should fill their iTunes gift cards with any of the following: Pure Heroine, which proves teenage Kiwi newcomer Lorde (above) has more ambience to offer than her already parodied breakthrough smash; Days Gone By, the winsomely attractive arrival of sister trio Haim; Once I Was an Eagle, the latest window into the mind of the new Joni Mitchell, Laura Marling; Yours Truly, the dawning of the new Mariah Carey, Ariana Grande; and True Romance, thoughtful synth-pop from Charli XCX. Above all, make time for replays of a bracing stunner from L.A. rebel Sky Ferreira, Night Time, My Time. It's the best parts of Lady Gaga, Garbage, Kelly Clarkson, Icona Pop – and Ferreira's heroin-steeped personality – rolled into one.

10. Three female artists over 25 – Club tarts with fake IDs and mall rats with mommy's credit cards – and anyone else who thinks all estrogen-derived wisdom begins and ends with “Roar” and “Royals” – should be court-ordered to spend a rehab weekend growing up with any of the following: Sing to the Moon, the otherworldly debut from striking English vocalist Laura Mvula (above); The Electric Lady, another soul-plumbing extension of Janelle Monáe's unique artistry; Pushin' Against a Stone, an absorbing throwback from Valerie June; and Heartthrob, the most mature work yet from Canadian twins Tegan and Sara. Above all, make time for replays of a bracing stunner from singer-songwriter Neko Case, The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You. It's the best parts of Aimee Mann, Kirsty MacColl, Fiona Apple – and the multifaceted Case herself – rolled into one.

11. Capital Cities – Sheer synth-pop joy. While millions worldwide waited and waited for Daft Punk to take the stage anywhere (fat chance), this L.A. duo stormed the charts with a similarly slick summer single, “Safe and Sound,” then proved at gig (Weenie Roast) after gig (opening at the Greek) after gig (Almost Acoustic Christmas) that their expanded lineup, with crucial trumpeter, provides one of the most exuberantly fun live experiences you can find right now. (Don't miss them on New Year's Eve at the Observatory in Santa Ana.) Their album, In a Tidal Wave of Mystery, is almost as irresistibly sly as their French counterparts' instant classic: The robots salute Giorgio Moroder, the Cities cajole Andre 3000 into a cameo about Farrah Fawcett's hair. Disco genius.

12. Dylan's Another Self Portrait – The bard's ongoing Bootleg Series, now 10 volumes deep, has largely been about filling in gaps: officially issuing the infamous Royal Albert Hall show from '65, preserving the Rolling Thunder Revue's best moments from a decade later. Only occasionally have installments been ear-opening revelations capable of spurring re-evaluations of career phases, and never more so than with this bounty of sublime castoffs and unearthed marvels from February '69 to March '71. That period has long been written off as one of his worst, yet this compendium (available in a variety of configurations, the biggest of which adds an Isle of Wight set with the Band) argues that perhaps his legend-debunking 30s were just as fertile and idiosyncratically imaginative as his groundbreaking 20s.

13. Gods and Goddesses of Heavy – In a year teeming with comebacks, Black Sabbath's was the most unexpectedly effective. We knew they could still thunder away on the old stuff but who'd have guessed they could summon that same strength for something new, 13, the purest Sabbath album since Volume 4? We also suspected Queens of the Stone Age (above) would top themselves with …Like Clockwork, but the gothic-glam sheen and emotional nuances of their first disc in six years were still breathtaking. Arctic Monkeys, meanwhile, turned their sludgier feel into a sexy grind with one of their best, AM, while Trent Reznor got back in the habit of making wicked Nine Inch Nails records with Hesitation Marks. And to prove skull-crushing distortion and martial energy can transcend gender and discernible meaning en route to maximum primal power, both the San Francisco metal men of Deafheaven and the militant Englishwomen of Savages issued magnetic testaments to brute force and glorious noise – Sunbather and Silence Yourself, respectively.

14. My Bloody Valentine – An altogether different sort of heavy, a singularly hypnotic sound that reveals new contours the more you sink into it. More than two decades after their previous album, the incomparable 1991 masterpiece Loveless, overseer Kevin Shields (above), airy bassist Bilinda Butcher and the rest of this enigmatic, intermittent Irish group picked up essentially where they left off – and seemed more in tune with 2013 than dozens of indie bands desperately trying to evoke their style. So many bowled-over critics have colored this return as “comforting,” which merely means their m b v album doesn't venture too far from familiar topography. That warped terrain, however, has always been as alluringly uninviting as a trip to Mars. For full effect, play at the loudest volume your eardrums can withstand. Soon as the last track fades, come down with the National's Trouble Will Find Me.

15. Arcade Fire – Maybe it was that shocker Grammy win for album of the year in 2011 that got this Montreal troupe thinking it could get away with anything, like an often brilliant but decidedly bloated fourth effort, Reflektor. A double album that would have been a masterstroke merely by relegating two or three good-not-great cuts to B-side status and squeezing the sprawl onto a single disc, it's stylistically ambitious like even Bowie didn't dare this year and, with the help of LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, groove-tripping like the headiest Talking Heads. It's also as weird and pretentious as both those legendary acts at their most indulgent. Tense even when they're having a blast, Arcade Fire has always been a short-fuse powder keg barreling toward such a rhythmic explosion as this. What's important is that the Great Indie Success Story has survived inevitable head-scratching fallout – super-goofy costumes, a feeble attempt at new personae – and kept its soul intact. They can mask their faces, but we can still see their hearts.

16. Hip-hop you probably didn't hear on radio – Drake, more so than Kanye, is the rap star who most skillfully bridges the divide between out-there genius and blowing-up appeal. Yet those arena-fillers are only the caps on a still-growing wave of incisive stuff that stretches far beyond the parameters of club bangers. Old, delving further into the psyche of Detroit's Danny Brown, makes a great yang to the yin of Yeezus. Pusha T (above), half of Virginia's Clipse, got 'round to making a solo album, My Name Is My Name – an insouciant killer, though Earl Sweatshirt's stranger Doris trumps it. And Chicago's Chance the Rapper concocted the year's most instantly enjoyable mixtape, Acid Rap, infused with edgy joy cribbed from pre-gangsta glory days.

17. Beyoncé – From her Super Bowl appearance and the globe-circling tour that followed to her new self-titled surprise-attack album, complete with video clips for every track, Queen B was the hardest-working entertainer of 2013 – and subsequently owned the year, finishing it off with her most enticing and explicit recordings yet. Hardly matters that Target and Amazon have refused to carry the new title. Their loss for not stocking a runaway smash with more variety and revelatory depth than Katy Perry could ever dream of displaying.

18. Kacey, Brandy or Ashley – Or better yet, all three. The Taylor Swift-ing of country music has been slowly producing a back-to-basics backlash best embodied by Miranda Lambert, as modern as she is rootsy. But three traditional talents associated with her deserve a greater share of the spotlight. Back in March her Pistol Annies sister Ashley Monroe pruned Like a Rose, the frankest honky-tonkin' since the '70s (check the S&M desires of “Weed Instead of Roses”) and the most authentic throwback to old Nashville since k.d. lang's yodeling days. Meanwhile, two of Lambert's favorite songwriters, Kacey Musgraves and Brandy Clark (above), issued striking breakthroughs. The latter's 12 Stories is a remarkable assortment of painful heartbreak and poetic realism recalling the everyday edge of Lucinda Williams and the eloquent grace of Patty Griffin.

19. David Bowie – The comeback of the year began almost as soon as 2013 did, when the iconic chameleon, reclusive for much of a decade, suddenly resurfaced on his 66th birthday with the atmospheric, profoundly moving ballad “Where Are We Now?” Two months later came a mostly remarkable album, The Next Day, which sounded nothing like that song. So much of it is bolder and booming, echoing his dawn-of-the-'80s quirks and steeliness as much as extending the robust art-rock he'd realized with his last two efforts, Heathen and Reality. Yet, though not as wholly startling or innovative as the hype surrounding it suggests – it took all the remixes and indelibly provocative videos contained in the three-disc collector's edition to convince me it might be as great as true believers contend – the album's lasting impression is heartwarming reassurance that not-so-retired Bowie is far from creatively spent.

20. Lots of Lou Reed – Sometimes it takes losing a legend to realize just how prevalent his influence is. Days after he died in October at 71, connections from his past to moves from modern-day titans became glaringly obvious as many of us returned to our Velvet Underground records and solo Lou gems. If you still disagree that the Velvets weren't the most influential group of the '60s outside of the Beatles, play the new deluxe edition of White Light/White Heat and then wander around Coachella, counting the comparisons. I keep going back to their self-titled third effort, for starkness and melancholy, as well as his Coney Island Baby (for warmth) and Animal Serenade (for memories) and, when I can bear it, Berlin and Magic and Loss.

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